John Harrington-WHAT WE USE - Stands

Here's a video segment on the stands that we use. A transcription of the video is available after the jump.

Hands on instructional video on photography from Assignment Construct.

Transcript:
Hi, I’m John Harrington and we’re going to break out and break down the wide variety of equipment we use to deliver images to our clients. Next we are going to show you one of the equipment kits we use when we are traveling on assignment. Each kit is different and has a very specific purpose. So lets take a look.

Hi, I’m John Harrington and we’re going to break out and break down the wide variety of equipment we use to deliver images to our clients. Next we are going to show you one of the equipment kits we use when we are traveling on assignment. Each kit is different and has a very specific purpose. So lets take a look. These are a variety of stand types that we’ve got here. This is a Matthews stand. Here’s a Bogen Mini Avenger. Earlier we showed you some stands from our light case, that are the Bogen stands that are compact and tightened down.

One of the nice things about these Bogen stands is that they’re interlocking which means that two stands are much more compact than if they were just stands that were strewn about. When you’re traveling, making sure that things stay together and stay tight is absolutely critical. These things pop together, and they connect back together, and lock together. So we have the small version, and the large version.

Here’s a Bogen 3373 stand. It compacts, it’s a very nice, very light weight goes into very small spaces, but still works very well. This Bogen Mini Avenger, what we really like about the Bogen Mini Avenger is just how low it will go. It gets very low to the ground. The lower stand that you would get is the floor stand.

We have another floor stand. This thing allows us to get a light down very near to the ground. This springs all the way out, and it’s a low stand, very similar to this one, this one just has a little more stability.

This is about as low as you can go and still get a stand that folds up, and it’s ultra sturdy as well. So we have no problems putting a head on this stand. This Matthews stand, boy it’s a great stand. The problem is it’s bulky. When you fold this Matthews stands up, it still takes up a whole lot of space.

Now I want to tell you a little about C-stands. You got to be careful when you’re getting a C-stand, because in this situation you have a C-stand that is affixed to the legs. When we were talking about sand bags, one of the things that you really can also do for extra security is to take the strap and run it over the top of this, so that once the vertical pole is in the base of the C-stand. The bag can’t come off at all.

We were telling you about the difference with C-stands. The nice thing about a C-stands that has a removable top is that you can get it in different sizes; so you have a small size, you have a large size. They even get larger than that; you can get very, very large ones. These are about as big a size of a vertical riser as we would want to get and travel with. These barely fit in the cases that we use.

But boy, these are industrial strength. These are what they on movie sets. We like to use them very selectively when we’re out on shoots. When we really need that extra rigidity beyond what a Bogen can provide. But in the case where you are getting a C-stand, I strongly encourage you to get one that has the removable base as opposed to the fixed base.

Because a base that’s this size, while it’s a nice stand, it just won’t come apart and this dimension here won’t fit into a traveling case that you’re going to be traveling with for the most part. So that’s a little bit about stands.

Below the video is a link to each of the segments, Let me know what you think!

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The Assignment Construct is a commentary about what went into, what went on behind-the-scenes, or otherwise occured before, during, or after an assignment. Everything from images of the setup, to choices of camera angle, client requests (and fulfillment), and so on.